An Extract from The Chaldean Oracles by G.R.S. Meade

The Great Mother
Hecate is the Great Mother or Life of the universe, the Magna Mater, or Mother of the Gods and all creatures.
she is the Spouse of Mind, and simultaneously Mother and Spouse of Mind of Mind; she is, therefore, said to be centered between them.
'Mid the Fathers the Centre of Hecate circles.
(K. 27; C. 65)
she is the Mother of souls, the In-breather of life. Concerning this cosmic “vitalizing,” or “quickening,” or “ensouling” (psychosis), as Proclus calls it, three obscure verses are preserved:
About the hollows beneath the ribs of her right side there spouts, full-bursting, forth the Fountain of the Primal Soul, all at once ensouling Light, Fire, Aether, Worlds.
(K. 28; C. 38)
If the “hollows beneath the ribs” is the correct translation (for the Greek seems very faulty, no matter what license we give to poetic imagery), it would appear that Hecate, the Great Mother, or World-Soul, was figured in woman's form. Hecate is, of course, as we have already remarked, not her native name (nomen barbarum), but the best equivalent the Greeks could find in their humanized pantheon, a bourgeois company as compared with the majestic, awesome and mysterious divinities of the Orient.
This was the cosmic psychosis; the mixture of individual souls was - according to the Trismegistic “Virgin of the World” treatise, and as we might naturally expect - of a somewhat more substantial, or plastic, nature. In this treatise we read:
And since it neither thawed when fire was set to it (for it was made of Fire), nor yet did freeze when it had once been properly produced (for it was made of Breath), but kept its mixture's composition a certain special kind, peculiar to itself, of special type and special blend - (which composition you must know, God called psychosis . . .) - it was from this coagulate He fashioned souls enough in myriads.
(H., iii 99)
It was probably in the mouth of the Great Mother that our poet placed the following lines:
After the Father's Thinkings, you must know, I, the Soul, dwell, making all things to live by Heat.
(K. 28; C. 18)
In the mystery of regeneration also, as soon as the conception from the Father takes place - the implanting of the Light-spark, or germ of the spiritual man - the soul of the man becomes sensible to the passion of the Great Soul, the One and Only Soul, and he feels himself pulsing in the fiery net-work of lives.
But why, it may be asked, does the great Life-stream come forth from the Mother's right side? The fragments we possess do not tell us; but the original presumably contained some description of the Mother-Body, for we are told:
On the left side of Hecate is a Fountain of Virtue, remaining entirely within, not sending forth its pure virginity.
(K. 28; C. 187)
We have thus to think out the symbolism in a far more vital mode than the figurative expressions naturally suggest. And again:
And from her back, on either side the Goddess, boundless Nature hangs.
(K. 29; C. 141)
This suggests that Nature is the Garment or Mantle of the Goddess-Mother. The Byzantine commentators ascribe to every Limb of the Mother the power of life-giving; every Limb and Organ was a fountain of life. her hair, her temples, the top of her head, her sides or flanks, were all so regarded; and even her dress, the coverings or veilings of her head, and her girdle. Whether they had full authority for this in the original text we do not know. Kroll considers this “fraus aperta” (K. 29); but the Mother of Life must be A1l-Life, one would have naturally thought, and one verse still preserved to us reads:
her hair seems like a Mane of Light a-bristle piercingly.
(K. 29; C. 128)
Damascius speaks of her crown; this may possibly have been figured as the wall-crown or turreted diadem of Cybele (Rhea), in which case it might have typified the “Walls of Fire” of Stoic tradition.
her girdle seems to have been figured as a serpent of fire.
The Great Mother is also called Rhea in the Oracles, as the following three verses inform us:
Rhea, in sooth, is both the Fountain and the Flood of the blest Knowing Ones; for she it is who first receives the Father's Powers into her countless Bosoms, and poureth forth on every thing birth [-and-death] that spins like to a wheel.
(K. 30; C. 59)
The “Knowing Ones” are the Intelligences or Gnostic Thoughts of the Father. she is the Mother of Genesis, the Wheel or Sphere of Re-becoming. In one of her aspects she is called in the Oracles the “wondrous and awe-inspiring Goddess,” as Proclus tells us. With the above verses may be compared K. 36, C. 140, 125 below.

All things are triple
The statement of Hippolytus that the Assyrians (i.e., the Chaldeans) “were the first to consider the soul triple and yet one" is borne out by several quotations from our Oracle-poem:
The Mind of the Father uttered [the Word] that all should be divided [or cut] into three. His Will nodded assent, and at once all things were so divided.
(K. 18; C. 28)
The Father-Mind thought “Three," acted “Three." Thought and action agreed, and it immediately happened.
An apparent continuation of this is found in the lines which characterize the Forth-thinker as:
He who governs all things with the Mind of the Eternal.
(K. 18; C. 29)
This fundamental Triplicity of all things is “intelligible,” that is to say, determined by the Mind. The Mind is the Great Measurer, Divider and Separator. Thus Philo of Alexandria writes concerning the Logos, or Mind or Reason of God:
So God, having sharpened His Reason (Logos), the Divider of all things, cut off both the formless and undifferentiated essence of all things, and the four elements of cosmos which had been separated out of it [sci., the essence, or quintessence], and the animals and plants which had been compacted by means of these.
(H., i 236)
We learn from Damascius also that, according to our Oracles, the “ideal division” (? of all things into three) was the “root (or source) of every division” in the sensible universe (K. 18; C. 58}. This law was summed up as follows:
In every cosmos there shineth [or is manifested] a Triad, of which a Monad is source.
(K. 18; C. 36)
It is this Triad that “measures and delimits all things” (K. 18; C. 8) from highest to lowest. And again:
All things are served in the Gulphs of the Triad.
(K. 18; C. 31)
This is very obscure; but perhaps the following verse may light on the imagery:
From this Triad the Father mixed every spirit.
(K. 18; C. 30)
In the first verse “Gulphs” are generally translated by “Bosoms," and “are served” by “are governed”; but the latter expression is a technical Homeric term for serving the wine for libation purposes from the great mixing-bowl (krater) into the cups, and the mixing, or mingling or blending, of souls is operated, in Plato, in the great Mixing-bowl of the Creator. These gulphs are thus mother-vortices in primal space.
The “Three” is the number of determination, and therefore stands for the root-conditioning of form, and of all classification. But if the “Three” from one point of view is formative, and therefore determining and limiting, from another point of view, it endows with power; and so one of our Oracles runs:
Arming both mind and soul with triple Might.
(K. 51; C. 170)
In the original, “triple” is a poetical term that might be rendered “three-barbed”; if, however, it is to be connected with Pythagoraean nomenclature, it would denote a triple angle - that is to say, presumably, the solid angle of a tetrahedron or regular four-faced pyramid.
The mother depths
The Bosoms or Gulphs (? Vortices, Voragines, Whirl-swirls, Aeons, Atoms) are also called Depths - a technical term of very frequent occurrence in all the Gnostic schools of the time. The Great Depth of all depths was that of the Father, the Paternal Depth. Thus one of our Oracles reads:
Ye who, understanding, know the Paternal Depth cosmos-transcending.
(K. 18; C. 168)
This Paternal Depth is the ultimate mystery; but from another point of view it may be regarded as the Intelligible Ordering of all things. It is called super-cosmic or cosmos-transcending, when cosmos is regarded as the sensible or manifested order; it is the Occult, or Hidden, Eternal Type of universals, or wholes, simultaneously interpenetrating one another, undivided (sensibly) yet divided (intelligibly). We are told, therefore, concerning this super-cosmic or trans-mundane Depth, that
It is all things, but intelligibly [all].
(K. 19)
That is to say, in it things are not divided in time and space; there is no sensible separation. It is not the specific state, or state of species; but the state of wholes or genera. It is neither Father nor Mother, yet both. It is the state of “At Once”; and perhaps this may explain the strange term “Once Beyond” - that is, the At-Once in the state of the Beyond, beyond the sensible divided cosmos. Proclus and Damascius speak of it as “of the form of oneness” and “indivisible”; and an Oracle characterizes it as
That which cannot be cut up; the Holder-together of all sources.
(K. 19)
As such it may be regarded as the Mother-side of things, and thus is called
Source of [all] sources, Womb that holds all things together.
(K. 19; C. 99)
The Later Platonic commentators compared this with Plato's Auto-zoon, the Living Thing-in-itself, the Source of life to all; and thus the That-which-gives-life-to-itself; and, therefore, the Womb of all living creatures. The Oracles, however, regard it as the Womb of Life, the Divine Mother:
she is the Energizer [lit., Work-woman] and Forth-giver of Life-bringing Fire.
(K. 19; C. 55)
“she fills the Life-giving Bosom [or Womb] of Hecate." - the Supernal Mother's self-reflection in the sensible universe - says Proclus, basing himself on an Oracle, and:
Flows fresh and fresh [or on and on] into the wombs of things.
(K. 19; C. 55)
The “wombs of things” are, literally, the “holders-together of things." They are reflections of the Great “Holder-together of all sources,” of the fourth fragment back. This poetical expression for the Mother-Depth and her infinite reflections in her own nature of manifoldness, was developed by the Later Platonic commentators into the formal designation of a hierarchy - the Synoches. That which she imparts is called
The Life-giving Might of Fire possessed of mighty power.
(K. 19)
This is all on the Mother-side of things; but this should never be divorced from the Father-side, as may be seen from the nature of the mysterious Aeon.

The Aeon
On the aeon-doctrine (cf. H., i 387-412), which probably occupied a prominent position in the mysticism of our Oracle-poem (though, of course, in a simple form and not as in the overdeveloped aeonology of the Christianized Gnosis), we unfortunately possess only four verses.
One of the names given to the Aeon was “Father-begotten” Light, because “He makes to shine His unifying light on all,” as Proclus tells us.
For He [the Aeon] alone, culling unto its lull the Flower of Mind [the Son] from out the Father's Might [the Mother], possesseth [both] the power to understand the Father's Mind, and to bestow that Mind both on all sources and upon all principles - both power to understand [al., whirl], and ever bide upon His never-tiring pivot.
(K. 27; C. 71)
The nature of this Aeonic Principle (or Atmic Mystery), according to the belief of the Theurgists, is described by Proclus. But whether this description was based upon our poem or not, we cannot be certain. We, therefore, append what Proclus says, in illustration only:
Theurgists declare that He [Duration, Time without bounds, the Aeon] is God, and hymn His divinity as both older [than old], and younger [than young], as ever-circling into itself [the Egg] and aeon-wise; both as conceiving the sum total of all numbered things that move within the cosmos of His Mind, yet, over and beyond them all, as infinite by reason of His Power, and yet [again, when] viewed with them, as spirally convolved [the Serpent].
(C. 2)
The “ever-circling” is the principle of self-motivity. On the spiral-side of things there is procession to infinity; while on the sphere-side beginning and end are immediate and “at once.”
With this passage must be taken two others quoted by Taylor, but without giving the references:
God [energizing] in the cosmos, aeonian, boundless, young and old, in spiral mode convolved.
For Eternity [the Aeon], according to the Oracles, is Cause of Life that never falleth short, and of untiring Power, and restless Energy.
(C. 3 and 4)

The utterance of the fire
In connection with the idea of the Living Intellectual Fire as the Perfect Intelligible, Father and Mother in one (both creating Matter and impregnating it), conceived of sensibly as the “Descent into Matter," we may, perhaps, take the following verses:
Thence there leaps forth the Genesis of Matter manifoldly wrought in varied colours. Thence the Fire-flash down-streaming dims its [fair] Flower of Fire, as it leaps forth into the wombs of worlds. For thence all things begin downwards to shoot their admirable rays.
(K. 20; C. 101, 24)
The origin of matter and the genesis of matter is thus to be sought for in the Intelligible itself. The doctrine of the Pythagoraeans and Platonists was that the origin of matter was to be traced to the Monad. The Flower of Fire is here the quintessence of it.
Limit the seperator
To the same part of the poem we must also refer the following:
For from Him leap forth both Thunderings inexorable, and the Fireflash-receiving Bosoms of the All-fiery Radiance of Father-begotten Hecate, and that by which the Flower of Fire and mighty Breath beyond the fiery poles is girt.
(K. 20; C. 66)
Those who have studied attentively the Mithriac Ritual (Vol. VI.) will feel themselves in a familiar atmosphere when reading these lines. The “Thunderings” are the Creative Utterances of the Father; the “Bosoms” of Hecate are the receptive vortices on the Mother-side of things. Yet Father and Mother and also Son are all three the Monad. she is “Father-begotten," and He the Son is Mother-begotten - the Monad perpetually giving birth to itself. The Son is the that which “girds” or limits or separates, the Gnostic Horos or Limit, the Form-side of things, which shuts out the Below from the Above, and determines all opposites. It is the Cross, the “Undergirding” of the universe, as we have seen in The Gnostic Crucifixion (Vol. VII., pp. 15, 43 ff.).
The commentators, however, with their rage for intellectual precision, have turned this into a technical term, making it a special name; but in the Oracles Hypezok?s is used more simply and generally as the separator.
Proclus characterizes this Hypezok?s as the prototype of division, the “separation of the things-that-are from matter,” basing himself apparently on the verse:
Just as a diaphragm [hypezok?s], a knowing membrane, He divides.
(K. 22)
The nature of this separation is that, of “knowing” or “gnostic” Fire. The
Epicuraeans called the separation between the visible and invisible the “Flaming Walls” of the universe. Compare the Angel with the flaming sword who guards the Gates of Paradise.
So also with the epithet “inexorable” (ame?liktoi) applied to the “Thunderings”; these have been transformed by the over-elaboration of the commentators into a hierarchy of Inexorables or Implacables, just as is the gorgeous imagery of the Coptic Gnostic treatises of the Askew and Bruce codices.
The simpler use may be seen in the following two verses:
The Mind of the Father, vehicled in rare Drawers-of-straight-lines, flashing inflexibly in furrows of implacable Fire.
(K. 21; C. 17)
This seems to refer to the Rays of the Divine Intelligence vehicled in creative Fire. It is the Divine Ploughing of primal substance. Straight lines are characteristic of the Mind.
It is the first furrowing, so to speak, of the Sea of Matter in a universal pattern that impresses upon the surface a network of Light (as may be seen in protoplasm under a strong microscope) from the Ruler of the Sea above. It is the first Descent of the Father, and the first Ascent or Arising of the Son; it suggests the idea of riding and controlling. The epithet “rare” or “attenuated” suggests drawn out to the finest thread; these threads or lines govern and map out the Sea; they are the Lines on the Surface; they glitter and look like furrows of the essence of Fire.
The emanation of ideas
In close connection with the lines beginning “For from Him leap forth,” we may take the longest fragment (16 lines) preserved to us:
The Father' s Mind forth-bubbled, conceiving, with His Will in all its prime, Ideas that can take upon themselves all forms; and from One Source they, taking flight, sprang forth. For from the Father was both Will and End.
These were made differentiate by Gnostic Fire, allotted into different knowing modes.
For, for the world of many forms, the King laid out an intellectual Plan [or Type] not subject unto change. Kept to the tracing of this Plan, that no world can express, the World, made glad with the Ideas that take all shapes, grew manifest with form.
Of these Ideas there is One only Source, from which there bubble-forth in differentiation other [ones] that no one can approach - forth-bursting round the bodies of the World - which circle round its awe-inspiring Depths [or Bosoms], like unto swarms of bees, flashing around them and about, incuriously, some hither and some thither, - the Gnostic Thoughts from the Paternal Source that cull unto their lull the Flower of Fire at height of sleepless Time.
It was the Father's first self-perfect Source that welled-forth these original Ideas.
(K. 23; C. 39)
With this “culling” or “plucking” of the Flower of Fire compare the ancient gnomic couplet preserved by Hesiod
Nor from Five-branched at Gods' Fire-looming
Cut Dry from Green with flashing Blade.
(O. et D., 741 f.)
As has been previously stated (H., i 265, n. 5), I believe that Hesiod has preserved this scrap of ancient wisdom from the “Orphic” fragments in circulation in his day among the people in Bœotia, who had them from an older Greece than that of Homer's heroes; in other words, that we have in it a trace of the contact of pre-Homeric Greece with “Chaldaea.”
These living Ideas or creative Thoughts are emanations (or forth-flowings) of the Divine Mind, and constitute the Plan of that Mind, the Divine Economy. They are more transcendent even than the Fire, for they are said to be able to gather for themselves the subtlest essence or Flower of Fire. “At height of sleepless Time” is a beautiful phrase, though it is difficult to assign to it a very precise meaning. The “height of Time” is, perhaps, the supreme moment, and thus may mean momentarily - not, however, in the sense of lasting only the smallest fraction of time, but referring to Time at its limit where it touches Eternity.
The Thoughts of the Father-Mind are on the Borderland of Time. They are living Intelligences of Light and Life, of the nature of Logoi.
Thoughts of the Father! Brightness a-flame, pure Fire! (K. 24)